Relationships of the minerals and fatty acid contents in processed turkey meat products

In this paper, the chemical composition of a set of processed foods made of turkey meat, including meatball, blanquet, hamburger, smoked chest, ham, smoked ham, roule and frankfurter, are reported. Each product was analyzed for content of saturated fats, mono- and polyunsaturated fats, non-identified fats, calcium, iron, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium and zinc. In average, fatty acids are present in approximately equivalent percent concentrations, i.e. saturated:monounsaturated:polyunsaturated ≅1:1:1. Sodium, the major mineral ranged from 681 to 1327 mg per 100 g of processed meat. Iron and calcium concentration ranges were 0.4–2.2 and 3.0–43.6 mg/100 g, respectively. The results were analyzed by the multivariate techniques, hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA). It was shown that HCA can group all the samples, according to their types, and into some extent also according their basic composition (only dark meat, white meat, meat with shortening added and frankfurter as single cluster). On the other hand PCA could better expose the relationship between the products according to their fatty acids and mineral composition. PC1 discriminates fatty/lean products, while PC2 discriminates the frankfurters by its content of salts added, Ca and Fe from milk and soy, all added during processing, and finally PC4 which discriminates the white/dark meat products through Zn concentration from dark meat.